


And I Recall (The Push More Than the Fall)

by firstbreaths



Category: Glee
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-12
Updated: 2013-11-12
Packaged: 2018-01-01 06:53:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1041706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstbreaths/pseuds/firstbreaths
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Last time they’d been in a room like this, Quinn had been minutes away from delivering a baby girl. Last time they’d been in a room like this, Quinn had gone into labour, and then gone on to have Beth. Or: A conversation between Quinn and Puck during 2x09.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And I Recall (The Push More Than the Fall)

Puck finds himself slipping away in the middle of Rachel Berry’s eighth rant this hour about her lack of a solo for Sectionals. He’s pretty sure she’s right about their reduced chances of winning and all, but she’s moved on to metaphors about life as a musical and learning from your mistakes and -- and it’s all become just a little too much.  


Their dressing room is eerily empty; most of the New Directions are pacing around backstage, the energy pumping through them as they prepare to perform. Puck can feel it in the balls of his feet as he struggles to stand still. It’s got nothing to do with making a laughing stock out those boys in blazers –- one of them is carrying a _gavel,_ for crying out loud, but still -- and nothing to do with a sense of camaraderie with these people. He just really, _really_ wants to win.

He’s just about to go and check on Lauren, who’s been complaining about wanting candy for most of the last hour and, unlike Rachel, her whining’s _still_ kind of hot, when he spots Quinn, sitting hunched over against the back wall. She sits folded in upon herself, like the spaces either side of her are filled with ghosts she dares not touch for fear of being exposed. He finds himself worrying about her and –- fuck, it’s been a long time. If there’s one thing he’s come to appreciate about the New Directions, it’s the way they skip from drama to drama like stepping stones, negating most of the awkwardness.

He’s never had to _truly_ deal with most of these things.

He could slip away from this –- should slip away from this, because it’s Sam’s drama now, not his, and he’s never been possessive about girls –- but Noah Puckerman, he’s kind of a masochist. It’s probably part of the reason he made out with Rachel Berry.

He finds himself thinking then, of Rachel and Quinn and the way he’s screwed Finn over, and it amazes him –- he’s an absolute dick to them, and they keep coming back. Badass or not, secretly he doesn’t think he’s worth that kind of attention. (But Lauren’s the biggest cocktease _ever_ and he’s fairly sure Santana and Brittany have gone lesbian, if the way they looked at each at Finn’s mom’s wedding is any indication, and right now -– he’ll take whatever he can get).

“You nervous?” Puck asks now, stepping around costume boxes and what looks like a pair of Santana’s discarded jeans to take a seat beside her. Quinn’s got her knees tucked up under her chin and all he can think is how _old_ she looks. Some days –- most days, really, but he won’t admit to looking just that much -- her lips are caught in this almost perpetual frown and once, when her shirt had come up during rehearsal, just a little bit, Puck had caught sight of her stretch marks, deep and red like angry welts. Even now, she wears the shame like underwear, tucked tight against her skin. He’d wonder what Sam thinks of it all, but a combination of that rumour about Coach Bieste and Sam’s overt glances towards her during glee club have made him realise –- he’s probably never seen them.

(He also tries hard not to think about what it had been like when he’d hooked a thumb under the waistband of her panties, exposing the years of self-doubt she’d tried so hard not to let in. Sam exposes another facet of that doubt; she wears his ring and gazes into his eyes during that duet -– _Time of my Life_ , Mr. Schue, seriously? –- because she doubts that she can be anything more than what she is without him. But Puck tries pretty damn hard not to think about the truth in that too, because he knows _he’s_ a Lima Loser, indeed).

Quinn shakes her head now, almost imperceptibly at first, and he’s so busy staring at the fault lines that have formed around her mouth in recent months and her hands, clasped together tightly in her lap, that it takes him a moment to realise that he’s asked her a question, and this is her answer.

The ‘no’ comes a little late, though -– and last time, this is where it all came undone, but Puck is nothing if not a bad boy and learning from his mistakes would be nothing short of detrimental to his reputation. In those early days of fighting with Finn, when everything had been white-hot and searing, and every time he’d touched Quinn it had been like a burn, he’d clung to this strange kind of idealistic notion that it wasn’t his fault. Because _no-one_ drank Bacardi Breezers under the bleachers with Noah Puckerman and expected nothing to come of it.

Silently, he places his upturned palm in her lap and she takes it, entwining her fingers – her ringed fingers, he reminds himself; the thin metal band is surprisingly cool to touch. ‘No’ or not, she’s still a good liar – he can feel the nervousness surging through the veins in her hands.

“Where’s Sam?”

“He’s nervous, and nine months of morning sickness have taught me that puking is really _not_ my thing.”

It figures. It always figures, with Quinn –- she’s constantly upgrading for men that aren’t the good choices they seem. With him, at least there was a difference; she’d known he wasn’t _forever_ or even really _after_ kind of material, but in some kind of ridiculous teenage rebellion, she’d chosen him anyway. He’s not sure what that says about either of them, honestly.

(Aside from the fact that she was at least a little bit curious –- or a lot drunk. Puck prefers to believe the former, because damn it –- he can get mothers a lot less insecure than Quinn into bed with a lot less than half a dozen wine coolers and _Finn won’t find out, I promise._ Maybe that was his downfall, with Quinn, making promises he couldn’t keep).

“It wasn’t pretty,” he agrees, and she slaps him gently across the shoulder in response. “Although I’ve heard there’s a remedy for that, and it’s called protection. If you ever let his porn star lips anywhere other than your mouth, maybe you should use it.” The joke hits a little too close to home, and he knows it. She knows it. But he’s always tried to bluff his way out of this scenario by playing the witty guy in a romantic comedy that’s actually not so funny when it’s reality.

“I don’t know,” she says. “Miss Pillsbury seems to think that chastity is also a viable option.”

“Miss Pillsbury would climb, I don’t know, some fucking tall mountain or something, if she thought that it would make chastity a viable option. She fully came into my health ed class when Miss Holiday was teaching, and freaked the shit out because there was a banana on the table with a condom on it or something.” He laughs, remembering the way she’d freaked out (the only person more scared was Finn, and honestly, Puck doesn’t get how he _ever_ managed to score a girl like Santana), but then he sighs, because -– foot in mouth, again.

“How can you stand it?” she asks, and her voice cracks on the final word in a way that’s all too familiar. It’s the same way she split underneath his body, arching up into him and away from herself, all at the same time. He’d spent enough time fucking girls like Santana and Brittany to get that it was different, with Quinn -– that even if she’d been in it just for a good time and not out of some kind of repressed anxiety about the direction her life was headed, it still meant something to her.

“Stand what?” he says, and passing geometry or not –- Puck is an idiot. Because the dull green walls and haphazardly placed mirrors are, all of a sudden, achingly familiar, even if he’d been a little too preoccupied to experience it. Last time they’d been in a room like this, Quinn had been minutes away from delivering a baby girl. Last time they’d been in a room like this, Quinn had gone into labour, and then gone on to have Beth. He remembers, now -– it’s what’s made all the references to condoms completely and utterly _awkward._

“It’s... Generally, I’m okay with it, but days like today... I really miss her.” She loosens her fingers from his grip, bringing her hands together to sit, clasped, in her lap. “Can you imagine it, Noah?” she says, and hell – it’s totally inappropriate, but he loves the way her mouth curls around his name. “We created a person. A living, breathing person, who’s going to grow up to be like us, but with more common sense.”

He gets the feeling she hasn’t talked about this much. Sam aside, he knows that her parents are still icy at best, shit’s still all awkward with Finn and well –- between juvy and football and actually _trying_ to get his grades up just enough that he can get out of this shithole called Lima one day, it’s possible that he hasn’t exactly been there for her, either. Mostly, he just hasn’t wanted to think about it; it’s easier that way. The few times he’s thought about Beth, he’s imagined her as Quinn’s, only Quinn’s, like he had absolutely nothing to do with it.

It’s kind of depressing to think that there’s this kid out there that could grow up to have a Mohawk or rock the shit out of a guitar and the only thing he can say about it is _hey, I was her sperm donor_. Because honestly, the only emotional attachment he’s forged in this whole debacle is with Quinn.

“We created a person who’s going to have all that common sense to someone who can actually help give it to her. I mean, the lady’s Rachel’s mom, or whatever, but she’s going to do a good job, I’m sure of it.” He takes her hand back in his, lazily stroking his thumb across her knuckles, and she feels so broken underneath him that he doesn’t even care that it’s a totally pansy thing to do. He feels her stiffen up against him, and he forces himself to remember -– right, they’re in a dressing room that could be invaded by any and all of the New Directions at any minute, and she’s with Sam, now. He’s with Lauren too, sort of, but he’s not entirely sure how much of that is love and how much of that is him enjoying the fact that, for the first time in a long time, he’s actually got to work to get a girl to like him.

Knowing that you can score with even the girls who never really wanted you; it’s a good for the ego, at least. (He ignores the fact that, once upon a time, Quinn was on that list. Because it was never really just about scoring, at least not for her).

“We made the right choice, Quinn,” he tells her now, and he means it. It’s these sorts of thoughts that remind him of exactly why they weren’t meant to be parents. “Maybe not the first time, but certainly the second.”

“I know,” she says. “But it doesn’t make it any easier, does it?”

He thinks that not making it easier is sort of the point. He never thought he’d agree with Rachel, of all people, but she’s right about life not giving them exactly what they want. His counsellor in juvy would have called character building, or some other fucked up thing like that, as though he could just add an extension to himself and ignore the fact that his walls were falling down behind him.

Wow, something about this competition’s made Puck really fucking poetic.

But mostly, he just thinks that he could have been there, if this wasn’t Lima and he’d had some idea about how to do things the right way beyond baking drug-filled cupcakes and sleeping with a few ladies to get extra money for cleaning their pools, after all. If she hadn’t gone running back to Finn and then to Sam and striking up strange friendships with Kurt and Mercedes (who are cool, and all, but scarves are only _that_ fascinating when they’re used for bondage, and even then he doesn’t really care aboutthe _fabric_ ), he thinks he could have at least tried, if he’d known that she wanted him to.

Which obviously she didn’t. He think it should make this –- whatever this is, this weird touchy-feeling bonding thing -– more awkward than it actually is.

“You’ve got Sam now,” he says, and he forces himself not to think about the ring he was running his thumb over, just a few minutes ago. He forces himself not to think about Sam’s mouth all over hers and that _promise,_ that promise that he’d tried to make first, with eighteen dollars and a cheesy guitar solo. That promise that she hadn’t been able to accept from him, because he was a reminder of everything that made her ashamed – and a self-confessed badass to boot. “And I’ve got Lauren Zizes promising to put out if I read Dracula or some shit like that, so maybe we’re getting something right.”

“Maybe,” she says. And then, like it’s the most natural thing in the world for her to say it. “Puck. Thanks. For listening, I guess. And for trying your best, even if you were awful at it, most of the time.”

He’s not entirely sure what to say to that, because –- most backhanded compliment ever? But it’s kind of nice to know that he the twelve months he spent with Quinn (trying to convince her to be with him, then actually convincing her to be with him, just for a little bit) before Sam showed up weren’t a total waste of his time. Puck tries hard not to, but he looks her up and down again, and her legs have uncurled, making her a little less tight than before, but she still looks so _old,_ and he wonders what these twelve months were like, for her.

Because for him, they were just a long line of never-ending fuckups, most of which happened because he wanted to be better for Quinn. Better because of Quinn, and he’s not sure that’s _entirely_ the same thing.

Mr Schuester wanders in then, and to his credit, doesn’t even raise his eyebrows at the fact that Quinn’s sitting silently on a chair in the middle of their dressing room with a guy that’s not her boyfriend. Possibly, that should be his first sign that the New Directions are so fucking all over the place that it’s not even surprising anymore, but it doesn’t. Puck and Quinn had a _baby,_ and they’re the ones who deal with their shit most normally around here. 

“Showtime in five minutes, guys,” he says, looking around. “Where’s Sam?” he says, and despite only knowing the dude for a few weeks and the fact that he’s dating Quinn, Puck thinks he’s kind of cool and all. He can kick all their butts at _Call of Duty,_ at least. But is he really _still_ throwing up?

“I’ll go get him,” Quinn says, standing up now. She brushes against him as she stands, and it hits him hard, now -– well, it’s the closest they’ve been in a long, long time. “Good luck,” she says to him now, her hand resting gently on his shoulder for a moment, and then it’s gone. Mr. Schue sort of just nods at him and follows, and it strikes him that being a Lima Loser is what reduces you to this -– you don’t question what you have, just what you could get. It’s why the damn glee club is like a Ferris Wheel, or some other similar metaphorical shit; everyone gets a ride, swapping partners like candy as they look for the easiest way to get to the top.

After a minute, he heads out to the right wing, lining up behind all the other guys as the first notes of _Time of Your Life_ begin. It’s kind of ironic, really (and yes, he knows what that word means, thanks to Artie’s tutoring), that Quinn’s out there with her boyfriend and her solo when, for her, the time of her life hasn’t even come, not just yet. Once, he’d been naive enough to think that the time of Quinn’s life might just happen with him (and he’s not just talking about their romp under the bleachers here, really. Just to clarify that). The thought’s enough to make him want to run out there, shoving Sam out of his way, taking his place. Puck remembers though, in a moment of shocking clarity that hits him _again,_ tearing through corridors similar these, clutching tightly to whatever parts of Quinn he could reach as though he could somehow just hold the baby in. And he thinks that maybe, Quinn deserves a chance to purge these rooms of the memory, replacing it with something new.

He knows he’s not the person for her to do that with, because emotional attachments aside, they’ve all learnt the hard way that show-choir competitions -– totally not the best place to demonstrate your feelings. And today’s little heart-to-heart aside, he doesn’t have that dramatic flair for sharing that the rest of the team totally has. Puck would probably make a mess of it, and not in the badass way that might leave some of those Warblers searching hopelessly for their girlfriends. It’s not like he hasn’t made enough of a mess of Quinn’s life, without _that._

Besides, as Rachel Berry insists on reminding them all: the show must go on.

It does, of course, and they win, well sort of –- but it’s not like he’s all over-the-top excited about it, or anything. Quinn smiles shyly at him after the announcement, her fingers curled into the small of Sam’s back, and he smiles back in response. It may not be perfect, but somehow -– they’re managing it.

It’s more than he’s been able to say for quite some time, and honestly -– right now, he’s happy with that.


End file.
